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Comic picks Davenport for beer ads

Old Milwaukee spots with Ferrell hit local TV, ’Net

David Burke

Nov 23, 2011

Those TV commercials for Old Milwaukee beer that Will Ferrell
shot in Davenport during September were the brainchild of the
actor-comedian, from idea to execution.

They began airing late last week on local television stations
and cable channels that can be seen in the Quad-Cities. It is not a
national advertising campaign, according to a spokeswoman for Pabst
Brewing Co., the parent company of Old Milwaukee.

Ferrell did not receive any payment for doing the spots.

“Will approached Old Milwaukee because he’s a big fan of the
beer and thought it would be fun to make the commercials, and we
couldn’t be more excited that he did,” Bryan Crowley, Pabst
Brewing’s chief marketing officer, wrote in an email sent Tuesday
to the Quad-City Times.

In the first commercial, Ferrell is seen sitting on a log along
the Mississippi River, extolling the virtues of drinking Old
Milwaukee in Davenport. “It’s just something I do,” he tells the
audience.

In the second, Ferrell is seen bobbing in the river, “hand
fishing” for catfish but grabbing a can of Old Milwaukee
instead.

Both ads have been posted on YouTube, with the first getting
more than 32,500 views in its first five days and the second
notching more than 19,000 clicks.

When asked whether there would be more of Ferrell’s Old
Milwaukee commercials on the air or online, Crowley replied, “we’ll
have to wait and see.”

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The 44-year-old Ferrell, best known for his years on “Saturday
Night Live” and movie roles such as “Anchorman” Ron Burgundy and
race car driver Ricky Bobby, made a quiet entrance to the
Quad-Cities in mid-September, stopping to film a commercial at the
Cedar Street Inn in Davenport. None of that footage was used in the
commercials that have showed up online.

Ferrell dropped in unexpectedly with a film crew at the bar not
far from Fejervary Park at the corner of Cedar Street and Telegraph
Road.

“We thought he was kidding,” Judy Fleetwood, who runs the bar
along with her husband, Carl, told Times master columnist Bill
Wundram two months ago.

The Fleetwoods were part of the filming along with bartender
Jamie Fithian and two young women who were customers that day.

“When Ferrell finished after about an hour-and-a-half of
shooting, he sat down for a beer and bought everyone in the house a
drink,” Judy Fleetwood said. “We still don’t have any idea how, and
why, he chose us for a commercial.”